Teen arrested in Louisiana shooting got ride from scene from grandmother

View image in fullscreen

No indication grandmother knew what Markel Lee, 17, was suspected of doing, and she later identified him to police

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox

A 17-year-old accused of murder in Thursday’s mass shooting at a Louisiana mall that left a high school senior dead while wounding five others got a ride away from the crime scene from his grandmother – and was arrested after investigators used surveillance video and license plate readers to track her car down, authorities allege.

There is no indication that Markel Lee’s grandmother knew what he was suspected of doing prior to his arrest, which evidently occurred after she told police that her grandson was in a surveillance image they showed her depicting someone seemingly aiming a pistol toward the shopping center food court where the shooting occurred.

A sworn police statement obtained by the Guardian spells out the circumstances of Lee’s arrest in connection with the deadly shooting at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, a case that quickly gained national media attention.

Officials have said 17-year-old high school senior and bystander Martha Odom was struck in the chest and killed after the gunfire erupted at the Mall of Louisiana on Thursday afternoon. Five others – including two of Martha’s fellow seniors at Ascension Episcopal school who were at the mall for an unofficial “skip” day – were injured.

Baton Rouge police later recovered surveillance video showing two groups of young people approaching each other in the food court. The video depicted bystanders running away at that point, “as though responding to shots being fired”, police wrote in their affidavit.

One person in particular could be seen running towards the men’s bathroom while reaching an arm back in the direction of the food court. That person appeared to be aiming a gun at the center of the food court, before being seen on security video getting into a white, four-door Honda Accord with damage to its front bumper.

Police said they utilized cameras that read license plates to determine the car had been driven toward the Mall of Louisiana more than an hour before the mass shooting was reported at about 1.25pm. They then found the car at the registered address for the vehicle’s owner, Lee’s grandmother.

She told detectives that she had driven Lee to the mall that afternoon, then picked him up about six minutes after the shooting.

Shown a surveillance picture of a “subject [who] appeared to be pointing a … pistol toward the food court” at the time of the shooting, the grandmother confirmed “that it was her grandson, Markel Lee”, police wrote in their affidavit.

Officers obtained a warrant to arrest Lee on one count of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted first-degree murder and illegal use of weapons or dangerous instrumentalities. Police said he surrendered himself to their custody on Friday.

Jail records on Saturday indicated he was being held without bail. Recently enacted Louisiana law allows 17-year-olds to be treated as adults in the state’s criminal justice system. He would face life imprisonment – albeit with the possibility of parole – if convicted as accused.

Baton Rouge police chief TJ Morse said the mall shooting appeared to be driven by “social media beefs and maybe gang-related stuff” but that the case remained under investigation.

Police on Friday also asked for the public’s help in finding a second suspect who was not immediately identified but was seen in a surveillance image that officers distributed.

Meanwhile, governor Jeff Landry said he was asking local, state and federal law enforcement to “prepare for a targeted warrant sweep” for anyone linked to the mall shooting. Landry, a Republican, said that effort would home in on the “neighborhoods that these individuals came out of” but he didn’t specify any parts of Baton Rouge.

“We are not going to allow our streets, our schools and our public spaces to become your battleground,” Landry continued. “Those who brought this violence into our public spaces and into the lives of our ordinary citizens, I want you to know you are now the criminal problem and we are focused on you.”

The Baton Rouge mall violence came five days after another mass shooting in Louisiana left eight children dead in Shreveport. Police called that shooting a “domestic violence incident” carried out by the father of seven of the children. Two adults were also wounded, and the shooter died after carjacking a person, according to authorities, though it is unclear whether he died by suicide or was fatally shot by police.

There have been nearly 125 mass shootings in the US so far in 2026 as of Saturday, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive, a nonpartisan reference resource, defines mass shootings as cases in which four or more victims are wounded or shot.

Gun violence is the US’s leading cause of death for teenagers and younger children, according to research. That fact combined with perennially high rates of mass shootings in the US have prompted calls from many for the federal government to implement more substantial gun control.

But Congress has not heeded those pleas over the years.

Associated Press contributed

• Louisiana
• US crime
• Gun crime
• Children
• news